Stuck In the Grief Process?

There are mental, emotional and spiritual ways of recovering from grief. At first, dreams can be stuck in the death moments. You might repeatedly have these dreams of the death or the process.  If you cannot talk about the deceased without getting choked up or sobbing, the mental and emotional grief process are not over yet. When you can talk about the person and smile and feel warm inside, you are fully through the grief process because you think of them fondly and without the guilt, loneliness, or confusion.

Mental and emotional ways of recovering include telling the story of the death to a loved one or writing about it in a journal, recalling every detail. You will have to do this same thing every day for a week to two weeks. It’s exhausting, but you will finally assimilate what happened and find it easier to talk about each time. This is the same process as recovering from PTSD. Dreams will begin to shift and when you speak the story or write the story each day, it is less and less emotionally draining. 

This is an assimilation process. 

The spiritual aspect involves where we place the spirit of our loved one in a new framework.  When the dying body takes the last breath, the spirit gloriously gets to be set free from the prison of pain and disability and the confines of the body. It is a joy beyond belief and a meeting of those loved ones who have passed on; a reunion. Celebrate your loved one's reunion and freedom in a symbolic way; hang a set of windchime outdoors (ideally, a southwest corner of the porch or garden). Choose one that somehow reminds you of your loved one in theme or sound.

Every time the wind moves it, it chimes. This is the breath of the spirit life. In Feng Shui, windchimes attract spirits. Every time that chime sounds, recall that your loved one continues on with eternal breath and every now and then reminds you of their freedom and bliss by chiming. 

I hope this helps someone. I have experienced the loss of nearly everyone I love over my lifetime and it has helped me to find the most constructive ways to get through the process and set a new framework in my mind that includes the eternal rhythms of life including wind and breath and music.